For many individuals, the act of taking notes is a very kinesthetic process. The physical location of notes on a page or within a notebook conveys a considerable amount of meaning to the note taker. Moreover, the physical act of thumbing through the pages of a notebook, also called riffling, to locate a particular page is very important. Note takers typically riffle through a notebook to identify the approximate location of a desired page and then locate the desired page by flipping individual pages. In this manner, riffling allows a note taker to quickly locate desired information within a notebook.
Despite the considerable speed at which a particular page can be located in a notebook by riffling, there is no parallel to riffling available for use within a graphical user interface. Current user interface controls for navigating between pages of a document do not provide the benefits of riffling through a notebook in a conventional fashion. For instance, traditional continuous navigation controls, like scroll bars, are awkward to use with large streams of data because they provide no quantum, or smallest unit of place, to navigate to. Continuous navigation controls make it very difficult, therefore, to locate a single page among a large number of pages in an electronic document.
Discrete navigation controls, such as tab controls, do provide a very strong sense of place and the ability to easily locate a smallest unit of place, such as a single page. However, discrete navigation controls do not provide the ability to skim comfortably through the pages as a stream, in a manner similar to riffling.
Therefore, in light of the above, there is a need for an improved user interface control that allows a user to more easily navigate to pages within an electronic document by providing the ability to comfortably riffle, or skim, through the pages of a document as a stream. Moreover, there is a need for an improved user interface control that allows a user to more easily select a single page from a large number of pages while retaining the ability to riffle quickly through the pages of an electronic document.